Advogato blog for juleshhttp://www.advogato.org/person/julesh/
Advogato blog for juleshen-usmod_virguleTue, 31 Mar 2015 18:06:35 GMTTue, 11 Dec 2001 20:20:55 GMT11 Dec 2001http://www.advogato.org/person/julesh/diary.html?start=3
http://www.advogato.org/person/julesh/diary.html?start=3Nothing much happening at the moment. Doing some
interesting work for my company with Java; this may or may
not produce any open-sourceable results. Knowing the way
the rest of the management think, probably not, but I live
in hope of one day persuading them that it might help us :-)
<p>
Also doing some not-so-interesting work with Windows, which
has let me in for my first experience of MFC. For those
who haven't, well, if you like the standard Windows API, go
right ahead. If, like me, you think of it as illogical and
inconvenient, MFC won't help you much. I <b>despise</b> it.
<p>
Had a few discussions with other NASM developers about
arranging a new release. Could be coming some time soon,
so any users out there be sure to keep an eye open!
<p>
In reference to the last entry, I decided to go with LGPL,
so anyone out there wants to modify NASM but was deterred
by the old licence, go ahead and use it under the new
licence!
Mon, 3 Dec 2001 14:56:37 GMT3 Dec 2001http://www.advogato.org/person/julesh/diary.html?start=2
http://www.advogato.org/person/julesh/diary.html?start=2Well, I haven't been here for a little while.
<p>
My home PC, which is half owned by my company, has been
commandeered back by them for a little while, while I work
on a project on it (my standard desktop machine at work
runs NT only, and the project is a linux one that requires
more processor power than our 200MHz application server box
can spare...). Hence, not much work has been achieved
recently.
<p>
A helpful e-mail recently pointed me in the direction of a
group of NASM developers that I had lost contact with a
while back (when Nelson Rush left their group, as he was
the only one I had ever really had a chance to work with),
and brought up the issue of licensing again.
<p>
For those who don't know about it, NASM is currently
released under a rather obscure license, that has been
officially declared by the OSI as 'not free' (I disagree
with them on various points, but agree that it isn't a good
license). For quite a while now, I have been intending to
relicense NASM under the DSPL, an idea I have been playing
with for a little while now. However, after two attempts
to get it OSI certified, it has again not made it due to
the license-discuss list not having given it adequate
discussion. It is a rather unusual free software license,
and I don't think they are entirely comfortable with it.
Maybe now is not the time for it.
<p>
So, I have been considering alternative licenses. Those
who know me well will know of my dislike of the GPL. As
one who works in the software business as well as in free
software communities, I know all too well that GPL code is
often avoided for commercial use due to potential
problems. To what extent do two interrelated processes
need to be separate before one of them can be licensed
separately? This is a very important question that the GPL
treats only vaguely.
<p>
I have been considering LGPL. A lot of people read that
and say 'but NASM isn't a library'. While this is true,
there are many advantages in treating it as such.
<ul>
<li>Aggregation of NASM with projects under different
licenses becomes easy: you can say 'you will need NASM on
the system' without having to worry about whether this
causes your project to be licensed under the same terms as
NASM (it might with the GPL, depending on how you read
it).
<li>Certain parts of NASM, particularly the instruction
table, and maybe also its preprocessor, would be useful to
turn into an actual library as many other programs could
benefit from using them.
</ul>
I have considered separating NASM out into a back-end
library (licensed under the LGPL) and a front-end program
(BSD licensed), to prevent any 'but this isn't a library'
style difficulties people may have. The task wouldn't be
too hard.
<p>
My other option is to just forget about keeping control of
the project and stick the lot under the BSD license. Then
I could forget about it all and just let people go their
own way - this is very tempting at times.
<p>
Anyone want to let me know what they think? <A
href=mailto:jules@acris.co.uk>E-mail me</a> if you have a
strong opinion...Mon, 19 Nov 2001 12:10:05 GMT19 Nov 2001http://www.advogato.org/person/julesh/diary.html?start=1
http://www.advogato.org/person/julesh/diary.html?start=1Got some time over the weekend to do a bit of
organisational work. Had a look over the current state of
NASM and checked up on what bugs had been fixed and
hadn't. I'm going to organise an interim release, so that
developers can tell whether or not their patches have made
it into my code and whinge at me in case they haven't.
<p>
Had a play with an old scripting language I wrote for my
company a while back, and got it to compile with modern
compilers &amp; glibc. I don't think the company is interested
any more so I may be able to persuade them to release the
copyright back to me, at which point it's open season :-)
<p>
If I can get it to work properly, I'd like to incorporate
it into Helium, which is an experimental project I've been
working on lately, a web application server similar to
ColdFusion... it definitely needs a scripting language, and
I'd rather not rewrite from scratch or have to learn how to
incorporate someone else's code into it.
<p>
Also got a chance to play a bit more with QT; I've started
on a personal finance tracking application to replace a
spreadsheet I've been using with something a little more
usable...
<p>
All in all, a rather busy weekend!
Fri, 16 Nov 2001 18:32:48 GMT16 Nov 2001http://www.advogato.org/person/julesh/diary.html?start=0
http://www.advogato.org/person/julesh/diary.html?start=0Well, its about time I got myself an account here. I've
been an occasional reader for some time, but haven't got
around to setting an account up until now.
<p>
I'm sure some people reading this know me (Hi!), but then
again most of you probably don't, so I ought to introduce
myself a bit better than the dry description I just wrote.
<p>
I've been involved with free software for many a year now.
The first project I worked on was NASM, the Netwide
Assembler. While most of the code in the earlier stages was
written by Simon Tatham, I worked closely with him on the
architecture of the system and have been strongly involved
with most of the design decisions that has brought it the
acclaim that it (I think rightly) has received over the
years. Despite rumours to the contrary, Simon's departure
as head of the team hasn't left the project completely dead
in the water, and a new version will be released some time
soon. Especially now I've got myself a new PC at home :-)
<p>
Anyway - I'll chronicle more of my life story for those who
don't know me at some point later. For now, I'll bring
myself back to the present with a bit of a status update on
what I'm working on now.
<p>
I recently discovered the delights of QT, and have been
working on a few little test applications with it, getting
to the guts of how it works. I don't know exactly what I'm
going to do with it yet, but it's good to be able to do
this kind of thing when you need to :-)
<p>
MOSCOW, my pet operating system, has progressed a little.
I now have the core of the microkernel running with a
couple of tasks doing weird things on the VGA text mode
display. Making it a bit more stable and adding debugging
support is the next step, following which I can start
implementing the IPC parts of the system call interface.
<p>
Erm... I've been doing a bit of research into video
compression, but that's my paid work, so I'm not sure if
anything free will come about from it (my company would
probably not appreciate me releasing the results of their
research!). That seems about it for the last few weeks...
if anything else happens, I'll be sure to let you all
know :-)